Health watch.

Pyramid Power

The Usda Nutritional Pyramid Has Attracted Some Healthy Competition

January 03, 1996|By Steven Pratt, Tribune Staff Writer.

The Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid---that hieroglyphic monument erected in America's nutrition desert by the food pharaohs in Washington--may not be the perfect way to illustrate the optimum diet, but it has been good enough to spawn a tribe of imitators.

As everyone should know by now, the USDA pyramid is built on a base of 6 to 11 daily servings of breads and grains, topped by 3 to 4 servings of vegetables, then 2 to 3 servings of fruit and 2 to 3 servings each from the meat and dairy groups. At the very top is the advice to eat fats and sweets sparingly.

Among the pyramid imitators is the Saturday morning pyramid based on a study of what's advertised on weekend kid's TV (it's top-heavy with sweets and has virtually no fruits and vegetables); a vegetarian pyramid in which beans and legumes replace meat; and a pyramid illustrating what we actually consume: lots from the sweets/fats group, just the right amount of meat and less than enough from vegetables, fruits and dairy.

One German beverage company even wanted to alter the USDA pyramid to include beer and soda pop, says John Webster, public information director for the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Information.

"They wanted to create a whole new section for it ... and at the base as well. That's not exactly what we had in mind," Webster says.

The latest pyramid adaptation, called the Traditional Healthy Asian Diet Pyramid, puts plant foods at its base and fish, dairy, sweets and meats near the pinnacle.

It was devised during a recent conference sponsored by Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust along with Cornell University and Harvard School of Public Health. Oldways, a non-profit group devoted to holding on to food and cultural traditions, also was instrumental in setting up the so-called Mediterranean diet pyramid a year and a half ago. Both outline healthful diets that seem to protect against chronic ailments such as heart disease and cancer.

The accompanying illustrations show that the Asian and Mediterranean pyramids are somewhat similar.

The amounts of oil and fat are minimal, as are meat and dairy foods, eggs and seafoods. It's a model, of course, and not one that reflects any single Asian culture, past or present. India, for instance, traditionally has used dairy products while the Chinese have avoided them. Malaysians, Thais and Vietnamese have consumed coconut, palm and other saturated fats, India uses ghee (butter), and other cultures use very little fat. Some parts of China have relied on seafood while in other parts it almost never has been used.

In one of the largest population studies of diet and disease, Cornell professor T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Chen Junshi from the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine showed that rural Chinese who eat mostly vegetarian with very little fat have few problems with heart disease and some forms of cancer. The China study had great influence on the content of the Asian pyramid.

In contrast, the Mediterranean pyramid, though also high in plant foods, is heavy in fat, mostly in the form of olive oil. (The International Olive Oil Council has been a major underwriter of Oldways.) This pyramid is based partly on epidemiological evidence of bygone southern European cultures.

Neither mirrors contemporary eating patterns in those areas, where the influx of natural and particularly processed foods from all over the world has been changing eating habits, not always for the better. Both also include exercise as a component.

So which pyramid is right?

A couple years ago at another conference sponsored by Oldways, Prof. Campbell and Dr. Frank Sacks, a Harvard Medical School professor and a promoter of the Mediterranean diet, had words (which in academia is equivalent to fisticuffs) over which diet--the Mediterranean or the rural Chinese--is more healthful. But because their positions are mostly based on epidemiological research, they were able to agree there could be more than one "ideal" diet.

The diets of most Americans can't even come close to fitting the parameters of the USDA pyramid. So if you can follow the vegetarian, the traditional Mediterranean or the traditional Asian pyramid, it probably won't hurt.

At least it gets you thinking about how you're eating. Isn't that the real purpose of the pyramids?